Small Finishes

I have a couple of small quilts to share today.  First a baby quilt finished in the spring.  Don't remember the fabric or quilt pattern name.  It was a fun, quick quilt.  Waiting for a home.

Here's the back.  This quilt was pieced while visiting my mama in a land faraway where there are no quilt shops.  So I got the backing and the batting at, dare I say it? Wally World!  The batting is bamboo which I liked a lot.  No complaints with the quality of either batting or backing. Like with anything, you just have to shop carefully, I guess.  

I quilted around all the little birds and flowers in the border print which was a pain in the patootie, but seemed to need doing.

And last, I finished the quilting on the foot warmer quilt I posted about last week.

Had a wonderful time handquilting. 

Here's a peek of the back.

So, I'm linking with Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday at What a Hoot.  

Thanks so much for looking.  I'd love if you'd leave a comment!

WIP Wednesday - Piecing a Back

Most of yesterday was spent doing this...

piecing a backing for this...

Again, hard to get a good shot due to space and light, or the lack thereof.  Here is a closer crop.

This is a big quilt (84 x 102) that requires 9 1/2 yards of fabric for the backing.  I already had 8 1/2 yards of a hideously bright yellow  that never worked with anything and it finally occurred to me to turn it over and use the back side. Perfect!  A little searching turned up this bird panel

that I bordered and pieced in to make up the difference.  The yellows worked so well together and it looks really cute.  Isn't it fun when things work out that way?  You'll have to take my word on the cuteness since it's pinned  to the floor right now and covered with batting.  I'm taking a break to post this before going back and starting the dreaded pin basting.

My ambitious plan is to hand quilt this.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Thanks for looking.  

Night Storm - A Guy Quilt Finish

A guy quilt, possibly for one of my stepsons who seems to appreciate handmade.  The pattern is Night Storm by Jean Ann Wright taken directly from the Marcus website using the exact same fabrics by Laura Berringer. Obviously, there isn't an original bone in my body.  Here is the back.

Why didn't I place that strip off center or at least more off center than it is by accident?

I had a dreadful time quiting this on my new machine, complete with thread breakage, eyelashing and tension problems galore.  I finally finished it on my old Kenmore with the six inch throat.   No eyelashes, no thread breakage no little thread dots on the back.  Go figure.

That  being said, there are two good takeaways from this quilt experience. I basted it with Elmer's Washable School Glue.  No pins or fumes and the layers held together great despite all the manhandling involved in getting the thing quilted.  For more info on glue basting check out the Quilting Board.  If you aren't familiar with this site do give it a look.  It's a wealth of information and quilting encouragement.

Next the binding.

See how nice and sharp my corners are?  Okay, I guess binding should be the same width front and back, but one thing at a time.  I used Sharon Schamber's glue basting method and it was so easy;  fiddly and time consuming, but neat and precise with no pins or clips to get in the way. 

I'm going to link to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish it up Friday and go finish burying the billions and billions of threads caused by all my stopping, starting and thread breaking. 

WIP Wednesday - Hand Quilting!

I've been wanting to try hand quilting for a long time and figured big stitch might be a good way to get my feet (or fingers) wet.  Have to say I'm loving it.  This is the small project I've started on, a chevron quilt made from a tutorial at Bee Square Blog that uses rectangles instead of half square triangles.

It's a small lap sized quilt that I plan to give to my mama.   Something to cover her little feet when she's lying down watching tv.  I used some really old stash fabric, which made me happy. For the atual quilting I'm using a variegated embroidery floss which doesn't specifically state that it's colorfast, but the colors are close so I don't think it will make a difference.

Here is the full quilt, again in dark house rotten photo mode.

For some reason I thought it necessary to add setting triangles which was a good exercise in doing a little quilt math for me, but which caused odd, floating, unattached rectangles at the top and bottom.  It's okay.  My mama loves me and she won't care.

Linking with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and going to make myself sick with envy over all the gorgeous things other quilters are making.

Design Wall Monday...Cheating

Here is my next project.  Isn't it pretty?  Hope to get started on it this week.

And here it is sitting all pretty in the bag on my kitchen table.

Kind of hate to take it out of the bag.

Linking this slightly cheating post to Patchwork Times.

Easy Street Finish

One of our local quilt shops is closing in September.  The owner is retiring I think. Anyway,I took advantage of the going out of business sale and finally got the outer border on my version of Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street.  Please excuse the rotten photo.  My house is covered up with trees and it is just dark all the time.

After walking past this quilt on my living room floor about a zillion times I've decided the turquoise or aqua or whatever it is was a mistake.  Should've gone with green like the quilt store employee suggested.  But I'm not changing.  It's done, done done and I'm on to something else.

  

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.